LITMIR.BIZ

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the stars. Back to the land and all that.”

      Matt grinned. “Awesome,” he said. “Let’s go buy a tent.”

      “Better unload the camping gear and the grub first,” Steven answered. “If we don’t, there won’t be room in the truck for a tent.”

      “They don’t come all set up, silly,” Matt informed him as the two of them headed back through the house, toward the kitchen door. “They’re sold in boxes.”

      “Thanks for bringing me up to speed on that one,” Steven said, mussing Matt’s hair once again.

      Matt supervised while Steven carried in suitcases, supplies of dried and canned food, sleeping bags and the camp stove, piling everything in the kitchen.

      He returned to find Matt standing in the bed of the truck, one hand shading his eyes from the sun, following a trail of dust down on the road.

      “Look,” the boy cried, sounding delighted. “Somebody’s coming!”

      Steven was relieved when the rig, a big, fancy red truck, turned in at their driveway. Matt would have been pretty disappointed if they’d gone on by, whoever they were.

      He recognized his cousin Meg right away. She leaned out the window on the passenger side and waved, beaming, her bright blond hair catching the dusty light. Her husband, Brad, was at the wheel.

      As soon as the truck came to a stop, Meg was out, sprinting across the yard to throw her arms around Steven’s neck. “You’re here!” she cried.

      Steven laughed. It had been a while since he’d felt this welcome anyplace.

      Matt scrambled down out of the truck bed, eager for company.

      Brad unfolded his long, lanky frame from the interior of the pickup and approached, and the two men shook hands while Meg bent to look into Matt’s eyes and smile.

      “You must be Matt,” she said.

      Matt nodded. “And you must be Steven’s cousin,” he replied. “I forget your name, though.”

      “Meg,” she said gently.

      Brad, looking like a rancher in his old jeans, long-sleeved chambray work shirt and ancient boots, jabbed a thumb in the direction of the house and said, “Looks like this place is in even worse shape than I thought.”

      Meg surveyed it with her hands resting on her trim, blue-jeaned hips. Her white cotton top was fitted and sleeveless, and it didn’t seem possible that she was old enough to be married, let alone the mother of a couple of kids.

      She could have passed for seventeen.

      “Brad O’Ballivan,” she scolded, sounding wholly good-natured, “I’ve told you a thousand times that it’s a train wreck over here.”

      Brad grinned. “It’s better than the barn, though,” he drawled.

      Matt had recognized him by then. “Are you that famous guy who’s on TV sometimes?” he asked. Before Brad could answer, he went on. “We know somebody else with the same last name as yours. Melissa.”

      “Melissa is my sister,” Brad said, obviously enjoying the exchange.

      “You have a sister?” Matt made it sound like the eighth wonder. He was an only child, of course, and so was Steven. Did the child long for a sister, the way Steven himself had, growing up?

      Brad crouched, so he could look directly into Matt’s face. “Actually,” he said, “I have three sisters. There’s Olivia—she’s a veterinarian and she can talk to animals. And Ashley—she and Melissa are twins.”

      Steven felt a pang at the mention of twins, the way he always did when the subject came up. It made him think of his cousins Conner and Brody and their complex family history. They were a matched set, those two.

      “Do they look alike?” Matt asked. “Ashley and Melissa?”

      “Nope,” Brad answered. “They’re not those kind of twins.”

      “Oh,” Matt said, absorbing the information. Then he brightened, looking from Brad, who straightened to his full height and must have looked pretty tall to the child against that sunlit Arizona sky, to Meg, then back again. “You’re famous, though, huh?”

      “Yeah,” Brad admitted, sounding almost shy. “Sort of.”

      Matt nodded and moved on, over the celebrity aspect of the encounter, evidently. “We’re going to get a tent and camp out!” he announced. “And we’re adopting a dog, too!”

      Meg beamed. “That’s great,” she said.

      Matt absorbed her approval like it was sunlight.

      “You could use Brad’s old tour bus,” she told Steven, a few moments later. The two of them had only known each other for about six months; turned out Meg was something of an amateur genealogist, and she’d tracked him down on the internet and sent him an email. Steven didn’t have a lot of kin, and he wasn’t taking any chances on alienating his cousin by imposing on her generosity.

      Brad nodded, though, and rested a light hand against the small of Meg’s back. “That’s a good idea,” he said, before Steven could get a word out. “It’s pretty well-equipped, and nobody’s used it in a while.”

      Steven opened his mouth to say something along the lines of “It’s okay, I appreciate the offer, but the tent will be fine for now,” but Meg already had her cell phone out. She dialed, stuck a finger in her free ear, smiling fit to blow every transformer within a fifty-mile radius and asked whoever was on the other end to please bring the bus next door.

      Brad, meanwhile, had wandered over to look at the barn. Or what was left of it, anyway. “Good for firewood and not much else,” he said, scanning the ruins.

      Steven nodded in agreement, shoved a hand through his hair. “Listen, about the bus, I wouldn’t want you and Meg going to a lot trouble. We’ll be okay with a tent....”

      Brad listened, grinning. But he was shaking his head the whole time.

      Steven’s protest fell away when he heard Matt give a peal of happy laughter. He glanced in the boy’s direction and saw that Meg was leaning down again, her hands braced on her thighs, so she could look into Matt’s eyes. Her own were dancing with delight.

      Matt must have told her one of his infamous knock-knock jokes, Steven thought. The kid did tend to laugh at his own jokes.

      “Never look a gift bus in the grillwork,” Brad said.

      Steven looked back at him, blinked. “Huh?”

      Brad laughed. “Never mind,” he said, and started off toward Meg again.

      It was almost as though the two of them were magnetized to each other, Steven observed, feeling just a little envious.

      Ten minutes later, the gleaming bus was rolling up the driveway, and it was a thing of beauty.

       CHAPTER THREE

      IT WAS 5:30 P.M., by Melissa’s watch. The bus from Tucson and Phoenix would have disgorged any passengers it might be carrying—Byron Cahill, for instance—at 5:00 sharp, before heading on to Indian Rock and then making a swing back to stop in Flagstaff and heading south again. She was familiar with the bus route because she’d ridden it so often, as a college student, when she couldn’t afford a car.

      Although she usually looked forward to going home after work, today was different. Home sounded like a lonely place, since there wouldn’t be anybody there waiting for her.

      Maybe, she thought, she should give in to Olivia’s constant nagging—well, okay, Olivia didn’t exactly nag; she just suggested things in a big-sister kind of way—and adopt a cat or a dog. Or both.

      Just

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